Writing Courses

English Writing Intensive Courses

The English Department offers more courses that satisfy the Intensive Writing 1 and Intensive Writing 2 Proficiencies than any other department on campus. Most students at PC take their Writing 1 course in the English Department, and a substantial number also take their Writing 2 courses here. Our writing courses — taught by both our Ordinary and Adjunct Faculty — are not primarily about grammar and mechanics; they are small-group seminars that use writing as a means of learning about a particular topic. Along the way, students develop skills in rhetoric and argumentation that they will apply to any discipline they choose to study. The courses for Spring 2026 are listed below.*

Writing 1 Courses

ENG 101-001 | TWF 9:30-10:20 | 1031 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG 101-002 | TWF 10:30-11:20 | 1032 | Shawn Flanagan
Kaleidoscope: Reading and Writing about Current Events Across Media Genres
The media content of this course (print and video) will address issues related to social justice and social impacts of technology on our lives. As we discuss the class content and issues it presents which complicate our own understanding, experience, and worldview, we will also explore the rhetorical situation of these materials and how form informs content. Additionally, we will also explore some critical/theoretical lenses that to offer grounds for a richer interpretation of student selected cultural productions. This work will feed into various interactive writing and media projects, which include short essays, presentations, and on-line forums. These initial observational, reflective, and theoretical writings in the first half of the semester will give way to assignments that focus on academic research as a process and culminate in a final research project that includes both a presentation and research paper.

ENG 101-003 | MR 10:00-11:15 | 1033 | Jenny Platz
Digital Identity
Every day we encounter digital texts such as social media, YouTube, video games, Netflix shows, and films. Often, interaction with digital texts is unavoidable, as we spend ever-increasing amounts of time on our phones, tablets, or computers. With constant contact with the narratives of digital texts, how are our identities shaped and conflated with the digital media that surrounds us? How do we represent ourselves through digital media? How do others narrate their selves through digital texts? What are the social, cultural, and political implications of creating an online, and therefore public, story of the self? This class seeks to answer these questions through rhetorical examination, and writing about identity and digital media.

ENG 101-004 | TR 1:00-2:15 | 1034 | Cristina Rodriguez
American Culture
This writing-intensive course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of American Studies by looking at the social, political, historical and cultural makeup of the United States. You will learn to close read American culture, from pop songs to urban uprisings, from the pre-Colombian oral tradition of Native Americans, through the Constitution and Jim Crow, all the way up to contemporary politics, film, and literature. We will focus on the role of institutions—the school, the law, government housing, the military, the police, the prison, the incarceration camp—as well as on those groups historically oppressed and marginalized—Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/as, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+. The course is framed by several “essential questions” about the United States. By the end of the semester, you will be devising your own essential questions about this country.

ENG 101-005 | TWF 9:30-10:20 | 1035 | Leanne Oden
ENG 101-007 | MWF 1:30-2:20 | 1037 | Leanne Oden
Writing In the Present Moment
The aim of this course is to help you to strengthen the transferable skills needed for making arguments in multidisciplinary contexts. In this small-group seminar, we will learn the best practices for taking a position on a topic of your choosing while mastering the skill of effective argumentation to produce and present a multimodal document. Over the course of our time together, you will develop the skills in rhetoric and argumentation that are necessary for your chosen discipline of study. Central to our work this semester, we will apply a number of research-supported practices in Rhetoric and Composition to complete 6 written assignments and a capstone presentation in our exploration of topics that matter to us. In our discussions this semester, we will consider questions such as the following: How can I identify and take a stance on a topic scalable for my research project? How do I find and critically evaluate the sources I want to use in my research? How do I write a balanced thesis statement that is focused in scope? How do I ensure that I am properly citing sources? Which library databases and other research tools are effective resources for my topic? What decisions can I make about genre, media, and design that are suitable for my audience? What strategies can help me with drafting, revising, and editing in academic contexts?

ENG 101-006 | TWF 8:30-9:20 | 1036 | Milena Radeva
Philanthropy, Altruism, and the Gift
This course aims to develop your writing skills through a variety of writing and reading assignments, draft workshops, and class discussions. We will read a plethora of literary texts and popular essays on the topics of community, altruism, service, and democracy. We will discuss the very possibility of giving that philosopher Jacques Derrida questions in Given Time. We will ask what it means to give, what motivates donors, how philanthropy affects its beneficiaries, if private giving challenges the practices of democracy, and what is the place of the Catholic idea of caritas in modern welfare society.

ENG 101-009 | MWF 12:30-1:20 | 1039 | Michael Burdon
ENG 101-010 | MWF 11:30-12:20 | 1040 | Michael Burdon
Disentangling Knots: Subversive Argument in Comic, Absurd, and Nonsense Texts
In this course, we will consider subversion as a means of argument and write our own argumentative essays on the nature and function of subversion as a rhetorical strategy. Through various enigmatic and experimental works, we will examine how writers subvert audience expectations, and to what end. We will work together to discover meaning in both fiction and nonfiction designed to undermine meaning, and to determine how subversive texts destabilize the very systems they operate within.

ENG 101-011 | MWF 1:30-2:20 | 1041 | PC English Faculty
ENG 101-008 | MWF 11:30-12:20 | 1038 | PC English Faculty

ENG 101-012 | MWF 11:30-12:20 | 1042 | Noah Brooksher
Selfhood between Interiority and Action
What does it mean to have a self? The establishment of inner life as an autonomous and agential domain, distinct from, but nonetheless sovereign over, our outer actions and expressions, is one of the central accomplishments of modernity. Yet, despite its ubiquity and familiarity, this notion of interiority introduces a thicket of complex issues that continue to perplex philosophers and writers. What sort of actions and expressions can adequately articulate our individual interiors? How can one ever know the inner life of another? From where does this interiority originate? In this course, we will explore how thinkers and writers from across genres and time periods have engaged with these profound and fundamental issues of modern life. In the process, you will be introduced to a number of critical writing and reading strategies that will enable you to cultivate a distinctive voice and personal style, learn how to organize your claims clearly and effectively, and develop strong and original theses supported by research and analysis. Works to be considered include the philosophies of Adam Smith and Iris Murdoch, literature by Jane Austen and Lucille Clifton, and the film Moonlight.

ENG 175-001 | MWF 1:30-2:20 | 1047 | Emily Pittinos
Queer as Folk: LGBTQ+ Literature
In this introduction to literature class, we will hone the skills necessary to enjoy and engage with contemporary poetry, nonfiction, plays, and fiction by reading the works of queer writers. In so doing, we will explore the breadth of human experience—its beauties, tensions, losses, loves—and the stuff of life that unites us all. Our LGBTQ+ readings will include works by Carmen Maria Machado, Tony Kushner, Maggie Millner, Ocean Vuong, Paul Tran, Carl Phillips, Eduardo C. Corral, and many others. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations.

ENG 175-002 | TWF 8:30-9:20 | 1048 | Jordan Zajac

ENG 175-003 | TWF 9:30-10:20 | 1049 | Milena Radeva
Hospitality and Being at Home in Poetry, Fiction, and Drama
What is a home? What does it mean to open our home to friends, family, neighbors, and strangers? In this course we will ask what it means to give hospitality and how we open our homes to others through friendship, kinship, and philanthropy. Our reading will encompass different genres of literature: short stories, poetry, novels, and plays. We will explore how these different genres work, and we will attempt to develop skills for becoming more perceptive readers in each of them. In addition, we will practice writing about literature in historical, cultural, and critical contexts, and we will learn how to incorporate research and how to use the library resources to strengthen our arguments about literary texts.

ENG 175-004 | TR 11:30-12:45 | 1050 | Russell Hillier
ENG 175-006 | TR 1:00-2:15 | 1052 | Russell Hillier
Introduction to Literature
Catalog Description: An investigation of the three main literary genres-poetry, fiction, and drama-with an emphasis on writing. Students completing this course should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations. Required for English majors.

ENG 175-005 | TR 11:30-12:45 | 1051 | E.C. Osondu
Insiders, Outsiders, and Otherness
This course will explore questions related to the notions of being “outside” — racially, politically, sexually, etc. Readings will include a novel about modern India, a novel set in pre-colonial Nigeria, two short plays by Lynn Nottage and Terence McNally, and tons of short stories ranging from Hawthorne and Hemingway to Carver, Chekhov, Osondu, and O’Connor.

ENG 175-007 | TR 1:00-2:15 | 1053 | Tuire Valkeakari
ENG 175-009 | TR 2:30-3:45 | 1055 | Tuire Valkeakari
Introduction to Literature
Philosopher Plato had little patience with what some ancients and not-so-ancients have called “the lies of the poets.” Why study such “lies,” literary texts, in an academic environment? Let’s find out. We will explore fiction, drama, and poetry, with a particular interest in what these genres are made of and how they work. We will mostly read American authors (e.g. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Julie Otsuka, and Toni Morrison), but two contemporary transnational novelists—Michael Ondaatje and Kazuo Ishiguro—are also included. Students completing this course should be able to read with engagement and discernment, discuss literature critically, and write analytically and with an awareness of scholarly conversations.

ENG 175-008 | MR 8:30-9:45 | 1054 | Jenny Platz
Coming of Age
The coming of age genre continues to be popularized in narratives found in young adult series like The Hunger Games, the video game series The Last of Us, and television shows like Stranger Things. This class will explore how the genre functions across race, class, gender, and time periods and why the literary narrative remains so prevalent. Students will learn how to form arguments and to think and write critically about literary genres like poetry, fiction, and drama, as well as other genres. To supplement our critical analyses of the texts we will examine theoretical readings and discover how to closely decipher the deeper meanings of the works. Additionally, the class will focus on learning to write confidently and persuasively about literature, how to navigate through literary conventions, and the meaning of identity and growth and what it actually means to come of age. We will read authors such as Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jhumpa Lahiri, Richard Wright, and others.

ENG 175-010 | TR 4:00-5:15 | 1056 | Raphael Shargel
Reading, Writing, and the Self
What’s the relationship between what you read and who you are? Does what you write reflect what makes you you? In this section, we’ll read, discuss, and write about texts that inspire us to think about identity: who we are, what we are, and why that matters.

ENG 175-011 | MWF 12:30-1:20 | 1057 | Chistopher Yates
New and Imagined Worlds
From Plato’s hypothetical Republic, to the popular fantasy and science fiction of the present, writers and thinkers have not only represented our world in fiction, but have sometimes left it behind entirely in favor of new and imagined worlds of their own invention. How, this course will ask, do these imagined worlds reflect, adopt, and interrogate the “real” world? What freedoms and possibilities arise from the ability to imagine alternative worlds, and how have authors troubled any easy relationship between speculative utopia and our own reality?

ENG 175-012 | MR 10:00-11:15 | 1058 | Noah Brooksher
Literatures of Inaction
From Hamlet’s endless brooding, to Austen’s heroines (who can’t ever quite bring themselves to accept a proposal until the end of the book), why do so many great works of literature center on characters that seem incapable of acting? This course will consider why we, as readers, are so fascinated by characters who don’t actually do anything and books where nothing really happens. Authors to be considered may include: Shakespeare, Austen, Dickinson, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton.

Writing 2 Courses

ENG 217-001 | M 4:00-6:30 | 1062 | Chun Ye
Introduction to Asian American Literature
This course is an introduction to Asian American literature from the mid-20th century to the present moment. We will read poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by a diversity of Asian American voices whose cultural heritages include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Hmong. While appreciating the literary sophistication of these texts, we will spend substantial amount of time exploring their historical, social, and geopolitical dimensions, investigating issues of immigration, war, race, gender, class, sexuality, and identity formation.
Lit Post-1800 Elective; UG Core: Diversity; Cross listed with AMS 217-001 (1009); Cross listed with AST 217-001 (2703)

ENG 231-001 | MR 8:30-9:45 | 2707 | Robert Reeder
Survey of British Literature I
To begin the semester, we will lean into the “greatest hits” nature of this course, devoting significant time to the hard-bitten Anglo-Saxon masterpiece Beowulf, the storytelling riches of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, with its complex depiction of medieval England, and to the early modern psychological and political strife of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Other units will address the sonnet sequence, with particular attention to Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, written by his niece Lady Mary Wroth; the subtle and sincere lyric poems of George Herbert, possibly the most profound poet of religious devotion in the English tradition; and, in part, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a particular focus on Milton’s self-presentation and on the civil war in heaven.
Lit Pre-1800 Elective; UG Core: Intensive Writing II

ENG 232-001 | TR 2:30-3:45 | 2708 | Raphael Shargel
Survey of British Literature II
Catalog Description: An intensive survey of English literature from Romanticism to Modernism. The course emphasizes the development of a specific British literary tradition, manifested in a variety of literary genres.
Lit Post-1800 Elective; UG Core: Intensive Writing II

ENG 301-001 | MR 8:30-9:45 | 1063 | John Scanlan
ENG 301-002 | MR 2:30-3:45 | 1064 | John Scanlan
Biography
Our course will have two principal concerns: the study of biography and the practice of writing. Biography is one of the most exacting yet malleable kinds of non-fictional writing, and because of that, we will explore many different ways an author can choose to write about another person. The culmination of the term will be the submission of an imagined chapter of a full biography of an important person of your choice. To see how other professional writers and scholars have handled the challenges of biography, we’ll read three important and recent biographies over the term. We’ll be studying three fascinating lives and analyzing the rhetoric of three seasoned biographers and professional writers. We’ll also supplement our reading with obituaries and short readings relating to the art of biography.

ENG 301-003 | TR 2:30-3:45 | 1065 | Amy Foley
Opinion Writing: Where Knowledge Begins
What can a writer say in 750 words? Apparently, a lot. The Op-Ed, as it was termed during the 1920s for its position opposite the editorial page in North American newspapers, continues to influence not only what we think is essential to public thought, but also our collective judgments about world events. How do we form public knowledge? How can we voice an original perspective on topics that seem to have acquired consensus in journalism and news? Socrates teaches us that opinion is an opening to truth since it transitions us from ignorance to knowledge. Op-eds in print and now in digital media have the power to build, disrupt, or challenge what may seem to be public knowledge. This course focuses on writing short opinion-based articles for a general readership on topics you care about in media, culture, sports, politics, and the arts. We will study examples of op-ed commentaries in popular venues with a wide readership, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Wired, and The Boston Globe as well as exclusively online venues like Slate and Salon. We will practice writing commentaries and non-fiction essays using personal narrative techniques and by engaging with current events and topics of immediate public interest. A special feature of this course is the public philosophy essay, which will allow you to thoughtfully examine modern culture and society.

ENG 301-004 | TR 4:00-5:15 | 1066 | Diane Beltran
The Review
Analysis is boring… unless you like making hasty conclusions, uniformed judgements, or just being irresponsible. Besides, you are doing analyses all the time, you just don’t realize it – and if you do realize it, then you understand the importance of analysis as the hard-working step of critical thinking. Boring? Hardly. If you can collect information and data (and data includes more than numbers) you can analyze it, from calories in a candy bar to cash vs credit card transactions, if you can dissect and deconstruct it, you can analyze it. Regardless of your major, you will find that writing analysis prepares you for decision making and well-founded arguments in and outside of the college environment.

ENG 301-005 | MWF 12:30-1:20 | 1067 | Shawn Flanagan
ENG 301-006 | MWF 1:30-2:20 | 1068 | Shawn Flanagan
Writing the Event: From Reportage to Report
What do a college student, a scientist, and anthropologist have in common? How about a journalist, a social worker, a manager, a marketer? Chances are they have all created reports. To that point, this class will focus on the genre of the report, some of its variations and remixes. Along the way, we will complete a number of short assignments geared to develop our rhetorical reading skills and composition practices informed by an awareness of rhetorical situation and other textual elements. Additionally, these activities (readings, writings, and discussions) will culminate in a well-researched event report on a topic of the student’s choosing and presentation of it in another medium.

ENG 376-001 | M 2:30-5:00 | 1074 | Tuire Valkeakari
Toni Morrison
In this course, we will examine six novels written by the 1993 Nobel laureate Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, and A Mercy. We will analyze Morrison’s dialogue with African American and American history, focusing on individual and communal trauma, memory, and healing. We will study Morrison as a literary author who, while writing about history and society, creates memorable portraits of individuals who are caught in swirls of social currents beyond their immediate control and find themselves responding, willingly or unwillingly, to such vicissitudes. And, of course, Morrison’s multivoiced and multilayered lyrical prose offers endless opportunities for discussions of literary style. Selected, accessible Morrison scholarship will be read as well, with an emphasis on race, class, and gender and on Morrison’s strategies as a creative writer. Each weekly session will be run primarily as a discussion, usually initiated by a student presentation and by discussion questions posted on the course website. The mandatory coursework will also include two short essays and a final research paper.
Lit Post-1800 Elective; UG Core: Diversity; American Studies Elective; Black Studies Elective; Women’s & Gen Stud Humanities; Cross listed with AMS 376-001 (1027); Cross listed with BLS 376-001 (2701); Cross listed with WGS 376-001 (2463)

ENG 390-001 | MR 10:00-11:15 | 1079 | John Scanlan
Law and Literature
The focus of our attention will be the relations between law and literature, two of the most compelling ways of understanding the world. Although we’ll discuss a wide range of subjects and writers, I expect some important questions will arise again and again, albeit in slightly different formulations. What are the similarities and differences in the way lawyers and writers think about the law? If some writers register critiques of one or more aspects of the law, on what grounds do they do so? Are their critiques in line with lawyers’ critiques? Are their critiques convincing? What areas of law most engage our writers? Why? Which writers, if any, hold views on justice or other social issues that actually influence the legal reality? Why, in the end, have writers been so fascinated by the law? And do films replicate, more or less, writers’ interests and predispositions? Students’ writing will be an important dimension of this class. As things now stand, I’m planning on having everyone write two short papers, one long final paper, and handful of brief, in-class writings. There will be no in-class final examination. This course is open to all students, including those who have never taken a single class in the Department of English. The course has only two “prerequisites”: a willingness to argue as carefully and as strongly as possible, and a desire to improve your ability to “see things from the other side.” Should you wish to speak with me further about this course, don’t hesitate to send me an email (hambone@providence.edu).
Lit Post-1800 Elective; Lit Pre-1800 Elective; Cross listed with HON 481 001 (1260)

* Schedule and instructors subject to change.